It takes a family to raise a village… November 16, 2008

Tonight I was in Oakland for Life Legal Defense Foundation’s annual dinner. Jennifer Roback Morse was the speaker and she focused largely on the defense of one-man, one-woman marriage. Her argument is that marriage is gender-specific and child-centered. The primary reason the state is involved in the business of marriage to begin with is not to provide tax benefits, but because it has an interest in ensuring a secure environment for the products of marriage – which are not SUV’s, but children.

Somewhere in the whole debate over California’s Proposition 8, we seem to have forgotten this. Children are entitled to a stable, functional home with two parents – one of each gender. Of course, in our divorce friendly state, most children do not get what they are rightfully owed. But the state’s interest in facilitating (to the extent it is able) an ideal family environment remains. In this world of technologically-enhanced fertilization, why should we continue to assert that children have a right to be raised by two heterosexual parents? Because – please don’t faint with shock here – men and women are fundamentally different.

The so-called feminist movement of the middle of the last century did much to undermine the inherent worth of women. It is an affront to women to tell them they are only valuable if stripped of their femininity. Yet last century’s feminists viewed liberation from all things feminine as their objective. And since the most obvious uniquely female quality is the ability to have children, the old guard demanded that childbearing be optional. Instead of celebrating the amazing privilege of experiencing the growth of a new human being within our own bodies, they determined that women would be better served if given the right to destroy the lives of their yet unborn children at will.

[By the way, the original feminists of the late 1800's had a completely different view of abortion.  Elizabeth Cady Stanton, for example, spoke for the most progressive feminists when she wrote, "When we consider that women are treated as property, it is degrading to women that we should treat our children as property to be disposed of as we see fit."]

Because last century’s feminists got their way, we now have an entire generation living in the shadow of that determination. An entire generation – the first in human history – that believes marriage is not connected to sex and that neither marriage nor sex are connected to babies. A generation that views women and men as fundamentally interchangeable, sex as purely recreational, and children as disposable. How ironic that in an age that prizes all things holistic, we should become so completely disintegrated.

For this reason, the state – now more than ever – has a substantial interest in protecting children by upholding the integrity of the bi-gender marriage relationship.

With that said, I don’t disagree with Roback-Morse’s child-centered marriage argument, but I’m not sure it’s sufficient.

I suppose one could counter that, given the epidemic of dysfunctional heterosexual families, the notion of the holistic family is a myth and that the state has no legitimate interest in preserving myths. Even if that were true (and I don’t believe it is), the state would still not possess the authority to call any relationship it chooses a “marriage.” In spite of Jacques Derrida’s efforts to deconstruct language, words still have meaning and the word “marriage” conveys a specific relationship, namely that of one man and one woman, that the state is not at liberty – California Supreme Court justices notwithstanding – to alter. It is akin to giving the state the authority to call – or not call – anyone it chooses “human” – or to determine the properties of numbers, for that matter. We may be foolish enough to think we can expand the role of the state to define marriage or humanness or numbers, but this does not change the fact that these things, and their unique properties, exist apart from the state’s determination. Of course, the authority of the state to make such determinations can have severe consequences, as history has borne out. Nevertheless, the state’s power in such cases is limited to a particular time and location. It is temporal – and ultimately illusory.